Songs of Sleep
by ieatmenlikeair
Summary: Effie seeks refuge from her nightmares in District Twelve. Basically Effie's and Haymitch's life post-Mockingjay. Might be upgraded to M in later chapters since some of the material will be on the dark side, but mainly it'll be a story of Effie and Haymitch learning how to trust and love each other.
1. Tales of Sleep and Dreams

**Disclaimer: _The Hunger Games_ trilogy belongs to Suzanne Collins, as do all of its characters, places, etc.**

She is six years old when she dreams that President Snow is chasing her through an abandoned Capitol street as the buildings around them burn with a strange, shimmering, and oddly beautiful fire. His mouth is dripping with blood and flecks of it stain her white dress as he calls to her—"Euphemia! Little Effie!"

She wakes up trembling and bolts out of bed, running to her parents' room, not daring to look behind her for fear that Snow will be there.

She doesn't bother to try and wake her dad. Even at her young age, she understands that he is passed out cold from all the sleeping pills he's taken. Nine years in the future, when his only child is fifteen, he'll take too many of those pills. She'll come home from school, excited to tell him that she's finally managed a passing grade in her algebra class, only to find him sleeping in his armchair. When she tries to rouse him, she'll realize that he has gone to sleep forever. The doctor will rule it as an accidental overdose, a thing not uncommon in the Capitol, especially among the well-to-do who can afford the fancier drugs, but Effie will know better.

Her mother is annoyed at being awakened and refuses to comfort her child, simply telling Effie to go back to bed. Little Effie does so with tears in her eyes. Back in her room, she crawls underneath the covers, seeking shelter, convincing herself that nothing can hurt her as long as she's cocooned in her comforter. It turns out that she is correct—Snow does not come to swallow her up into his gaping, bleeding maw, and eventually she falls into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, when she mentions the dream to her parents, her mother coldly tells her to forget about it and never to mention it again, not to anyone. Effie is hurt, but later in her life she'll remember the dream and understand her mother's reaction. To speak of the dream would surely have been seen as treason—it was probably treasonous, on Effie's part, even to have had the dream in the first place. The Trinkets are not a family that can afford to fall in the President's favor, since Mrs. Trinket's father is a Capitol politician whose job depends on being in Snow's good graces.

Six-year-old Effie, of course, does not understand this. Still, she's sufficiently afraid of her mother that the dream is never spoken of again, and the next time she sees Snow, she allows herself to be bounced on the old man's knee just like she knows she's supposed to. Beneath her innocent, happy little-girl smile, though, lies a suppressed shiver when Snow kisses her cheek and her nose catches the reek of blood disguised beneath the mint on his breath.


	2. Fallen

"_Heaven bend to take my hand,_

_I've nowhere left to turn._

_I'm lost in those I thought were friends,_

_To everyone I know._

_Oh, they turn their heads, embarrassed,_

_Pretend that they don't see_

_That it's one misstep, one slip before you know it._

_And there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed."_

"_Fallen" – Sarah McLachlan_

Effie learned early in her life that any expression of her fears and anxieties would not be tolerated, and that she had to put on a smile and be pleasant even when her psyche felt as though it could shatter like glass.

She never seemed to have nightmares after that early one about Snow. When she did, they were silly little things that hardly counted, dreams about being naked in class or a boyfriend breaking up with her on live television, and an especially vivid one before her first reaping about having her monthlies come on while wearing a white suit and having to go up in front of the whole of District Twelve with a spreading crimson stain on her skirt because there was no time to change.

Effie had almost forgotten how to dream, how to be afraid, and so she had been even less prepared than most for the horror visited upon her in the Capitol's prison.

Fear is her constant companion now. Endless months of being beaten and starved, of having needles rip into her veins to shock her system with strange drugs, have re-educated her in terror.

Her dreams are nothing but nightmares and she doesn't know how to turn them off. Sometimes the old dreams come back in new and horrifying ways, but mostly she dreams about her jail cell, her captors, or the room in which she was taken to be strapped down to a table, injected with tracker jacker venom, and interrogated for hours. Tonight Peeta Mellark is the star of her nightmares as she remembers an incident in which she was dragged from her cell and taken to a room where she was stripped naked and he was forced to watch, restrained and unable to help, while a Peacekeeper sliced her skin until her blood was dripping onto the floor beneath her. As the knives slash through her already-abused flesh, all she can focus on are Peeta's eyes, wide and blue and filled with tears.

She wakes up wailing, hurriedly checking her body for gashes and festering wounds and then leaping into her shower to wash away the shame that has been ingrained into every fiber of her soul. She sits underneath the hot spray, her arms wrapped around her legs, curling into a ball and rocking herself while humming an old lullaby that someone used to sing to her as a child. She tries to place the voice that originally would have sung to her—her father never sang, and her mother never set foot in her nursery. Effie had had a governess until about the age of five, when the woman had been accused of stealing silverware and dismissed. It must have been the governess who sang to her. Effie cannot figure out why this is important except that it gives her something to think about other than her dreams and the traumatic events that form the fabric of them.

_You had a life before all of this happened; you can pick up the pieces and have a life again_. She repeats this like a mantra but cannot convince herself of it no matter how many times the words play in her head.

She steps out of the shower and into a bathrobe and then she sits on the edge of her bed. Her short blonde hair is wild around her face, but her hairbrush is across the room and she doesn't feel like getting up. Her after-bath ritual used to consist of an array of hair care products and skin creams, but she doesn't see the point in all of that now. She never gets out anymore. No one sees her, ever.

Effie Trinket, who used to be such a social butterfly and always knew the latest gossip that fashionable Capitol circles had to offer, now has no friends.

Many of the people she used to know were her colleagues in the Hunger Games. They're all dead now—those who weren't killed by Snow were executed under Coin. She thinks briefly of Seneca Crane, remembering him not as Head Gamemaker in his tailored suit and fancifully designed facial hair but as the little boy who used to pull her pigtail and chase her around the playground.

Many more of her friends died during the occupation of the Capitol, and those who are living won't talk to her anymore. She was jailed by the Capitol and almost executed by the rebels, so no one is sure what side she was or is on, but everyone saw her on television, hovering in the background the day that Katniss Everdeen killed President Coin. All of her old Capitol friends, even people who were close to her parents and have known her since before she could toddle, believe her to be a traitor.

Effie reaches over to her bedside table, pulling a drawer open and fumbling around until her hand closes on the sleek little bottle of pills. She examines them in the lamplight. The doctor assured her that this time the medicine would work, that she'd be able to sleep, but he was wrong. Effie concludes that he's a quack who doesn't know what he's talking about, just like the last one. She rattles the bottle, considering the little capsules of synthetic sleep.

When she was fifteen, her father went to sleep forever. Effie wonders if she could follow in his footsteps, smother her life with chemicals just like Daddy did. She shakes her head, goes to the bathroom, emptying the bottle into the toilet and flushing. She's too much of an insomniac for eternal sleep.

Without thinking, she walks back to her room and picks up the phone. She doesn't even have to look to find the right keys; she used to have to dial this number all the time to make sure the man to whom it belonged would be awake and at least able to pass for sober whenever she arrived in his district. His voice on the other end of the line is groggy and he curses at her without even knowing who he's speaking to. He seems to snap awake when he hears her voice, though it hardly sounds like her voice at all because she's so choked by tears.

"Hey, sweetheart, I can't understand a damn thing you're saying. Calm down," he says, "Calm down. What's going on?"

She sobs on and on about the Capitol, about the disapproving stares from every direction and the people who yell obscenities at her on the streets, the doctors who won't listen and the friends who've turned their backs on her, about the nightmares and the pills. He listens to her ramble patiently, and when she's done, she can hear him sigh.

"You've got to get out of there, Eff," he says.

"I can't. I've got no one anymore, nowhere to go. I'm trapped."

"You've got me," he replies. When she doesn't respond, he goes on, his nervousness obvious in his voice, "You've got Katniss and Peeta. They're here in Twelve, too. You should come and see us."

Effie closes her eyes and thinks. Katniss and Peeta. Would either of them really welcome her into their home? She has her doubts about Katniss, but knows that Peeta would, if only to be kind. She shakes her head, knowing she could never impose on either of them. She has no idea what state they're in, but suspects they're probably just as fucked up as she is, if not worse. She knows, too, that their emotional trauma is all her fault. If she hadn't picked their names, if only she could have pulled any other slips of paper but the ones with Primrose Everdeen and Peeta Mellark written on them…

"Princess?" his voice interrupts her reverie, "You there?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"What do you think, about taking a little vacation in Twelve?"

"I…" her voice falters, "I don't know…"

"Just say yes, Effie." Effie says nothing.

"Look, I'm not letting you stay in that fucked-up place by yourself, especially since you just told me you've got an endless supply of pills that you're thinking of shoveling all in your mouth at once. If you don't agree to come voluntarily, I'll get on the next train and drag your ass home with me. I guarantee neither of us will like that."

Effie almost smiles at his gruffness. At least there's one thing that hasn't changed.

"Yes," she says, "I'll come."

She talks to him a bit longer before he finally grumbles about needing sleep and hangs up. She immediately flies into action, breaking out her suitcase and trying to decide what to pack. It would be a little easier if she knew how long she was going to be staying—Haymitch only said "until we're both on the point of murdering each other." By the time dawn begins to break through her tightly-shuttered window, Effie has two bags ready to go and is out the door, heading for the train station.


	3. District 12

She is nervous stepping off of the train. She fears an attack. Historically, every time she's disembarked from a train in District 12, she's been there as the face of death, coming to choose which two of the district's children are going to be murdered. She expects retaliation now that there are no Peacekeepers surrounding her and no Capitol to keep the people afraid.

She's surprised, first of all, by how barren everything seems. Every time she's come here before, there have always been people milling about, going on with their day-to-day business, even on reaping day. She remembers being told, after being taken in by the rebels, that Twelve had been heavily bombed and many of the people here were killed and the survivors relocated to Thirteen. She supposes that those who came back are still trying to rebuild and repopulate.

There are a few people about, though, as she steps outside of the train station, looking for Haymitch. An old woman sitting on a bench against a far wall smiles a toothless grin at her. Effie's mouth wavers as she returns the smile. Two children walk by with their mother, each holding on to one of the woman's hands. The smallest of them, a little girl in a dirty patchwork dress, smiles and waves before turning away.

Effie is confused by this reception. The wind begins to pick up slightly, and she pushes a flyaway strand of golden hair behind her ears. Then she realizes why everyone is so friendly. They don't recognize her. Her medium-length hair is uncovered by a wig, she wears not even a smudge of makeup, and she's dressed simply, in a plain navy-blue dress with white flats. Without her freakish Capitol disguise, she's not Effie Trinket to these people. She's just a pretty, well-dressed woman getting off of a train.

Effie almost smiles at this. Of course, she won't be able to pretend to be someone she's not forever, especially not if she stays in Twelve for an extended period of time. Still, it's nice, for once, to go somewhere and not be leered and hollered at. In the Capitol, everyone seems to know her, and they recognize her even without her makeup and elaborate clothes. Plenty of pictures of her, barefaced and outfitted in her drab, government-issue prison dress, were circulated around the city in newspapers and on television while she was held captive. Her suffering had been made a public spectacle. Back at home, she is recognized with or without makeup, and recognition is never a good thing, not anymore. Momentary anonymity in District Twelve is a welcome change.

"Hey, Princess!" Effie's heart skips a beat at the sound of a voice that she hasn't heard in person for half a year, a voice that she never thought she'd hear again. She turns toward the voice and sees Haymitch, dressed in a simple, white button-down shirt and fitted pants, so different from what he used to wear in the Capitol.

_Correction_, Effie thinks, _different from what I used to _make _him wear_, for she had always given Cinna and Portia express orders to make sure that Haymitch was dressed "like a gentleman" during the Games. She blushes at the memory, but can't help thinking that he looks better like this. More natural, more himself. He always had been noticeably uncomfortable in suits and ties.

"Haymitch!" she can't help but call out, jogging toward him with her bags. Haymitch smiles in amusement at this. A bare-faced Effie Trinket in flat-heeled shoes, running with her blonde hair flying behind her—he never thought he'd live to see that.

She stops in front of him, suddenly unsure what to do, whether she should hug him, or shake his hand, or…what? She makes a small motion to extend her arms to him, but then realizes she's holding a suitcase in each hand.

"Here, let me get one of those for you," Haymitch offers, reaching out for the heavier of the two and groaning at its weight when she hands it to him. "Let me guess," he says, "This one's for all your clown makeup."

Effie frowns. "You'll be happy to know I brought very little makeup with me. I…I hardly wear the stuff anymore."

Haymitch lets out a mock-startled gasp. "The world as we know it truly has ended." Effie shoots him a dirty look before asking how far his house is and how they're going to get there.

"Same way I got here, sweetheart. We're going to walk. Good thing you wore sensible shoes for once in your life."

Effie momentarily considers protesting at the prospect of walking. It's so hot outside and she's already getting rocks and dirt in her shoes, but when Haymitch begins to walk away, she has no choice but to follow. She's pleasantly surprised when it turns out that his house isn't far from the train station. They pass what she knows to be Katniss's house on their trek through Victor's Village, and Effie almost asks how the younger woman is doing, but forgets about that when they approach Haymitch's house. She notices the spacious pen that's been built alongside the structure. Curious, she walks up to the pen and peers inside.

"You have geese," Effie observes.

"Yeah, a couple of the damn things started hanging around the place, so I fed them. Shouldn't have done that. They got it in their heads that this was their home or something, and they had babies and decided to stay forever."

"I like geese," says Effie as she joins Haymitch on his porch and follows him into his house. As usual, the place looks like a war zone, with liquor bottles strewn everywhere, a thick layer of dust on almost everything, and even some overturned furniture. Effie grimaces, but Haymitch doesn't notice; he simply leads her up a flight of stairs, deposits her suitcase onto the bed of his spare room, and then goes off on his own, muttering something about this being the time of day when he usually sleeps off his morning buzz.

Effie is left on her own for several hours. She unpacks her bags, arranging her clothes neatly in the drawers of the dresser, and then spends an hour or two reading. When the book loses her attention, she goes outside, finds a sack full of grain next to the pen that holds the geese, and throws them a few handfuls, watching them scramble all over each other to get some. When Haymitch finally wakes up and comes looking for Effie, this is where he finds her, outside with the geese.

"They're like pigs with that stuff," he says, watching one of the goslings shove another out of the way to get to a pile of the grain.

"I guess they were just hungry," Effie replies, "Speaking of which, what do you have for dinner?"

Haymitch snorts. "Probably half a loaf of stale bread and a can of beets. Don't keep food in the house. Don't cook."

"Well then how do you eat?"

"Don't. Not that often, anyway. You forget I grew up here. Seam kids start learning to be hungry the second they're born. Kind of carries over into adulthood."

Effie chews her lower lip and Haymitch feels bad about his remarks. He doesn't want Effie to feel as though he's criticizing her for expecting to be able to eat while staying with him.

"We could go and eat at Katniss's tonight, if you want. Sometimes I go there if I'm hungry."

"Katniss cooks?" asks Effie, trying and failing to picture the girl in front of a stove with an apron and potholders.

"No, Katniss mostly sits in a chair and stares at the wall. Greasy Sae is the one who cooks."

"Greasy…Sae?" Effie says the name slowly.

"Yeah, she used to sell soup in The Hob; now she's kind of a housekeeper for Katniss. She makes this dog meat soup that's to die for."

"Sounds…erm…charming," Effie says, suddenly thinking that maybe she's not so hungry after all.


	4. Forgiveness

Peeta shifts the basket of rolls to one hand and uses the other to knock on Haymitch's door. Knocking, of course, is only a formality. The door to Haymitch's house is always unlocked; nobody in Twelve actually bolts their doors. There still aren't nearly as many people in the district as there had been before the bombing, but even in the old days, nobody would have tried to rob anyone. Everybody knew everyone else, and anyway, almost nobody in Twelve had anything worth stealing.

Peeta is surprised when an incredibly groggy, disheveled Haymitch opens the door, dressed in nothing but a baggy pair of pants. Usually Peeta just lets himself in, leaves the weekly delivery of bread and pastries on the kitchen table, and Haymitch thanks him the next time they see each other around town. The two men hadn't actually spoken more than a few words to one another in weeks.

"Oh, hey," Peeta says, "Didn't think you'd be up this early."

"Couldn't sleep," Haymitch answers, scratching his stomach and beckoning for Peeta to come inside.

"Coffee?" Haymitch asks.

"Sure," replies Peeta. He sets the basket down on the table and takes the mug that Haymitch offers him.

"So how's everything? You and Katniss doing okay?" asks Haymitch as he paws around in the basket, finally retrieving a doughnut.

"I'm not sure. She still doesn't talk much. We've made some progress, though, talking about simple stuff like people we used to go to school with. Probably would be easier to talk about the past if everyone we used to know wasn't dead, though."

Haymitch grunts in assent.

"So," Peeta says, looking around the room at the bottles in the sink, the pots and pans piled up on the stove, anywhere but at Haymitch, "I, uh…I've heard you've got a woman staying with you. People who saw her get off the train say she's got a Capitol look to her."

"Is it a crime for me to have a woman in my house?" Haymitch asks irritably.

"No, no, of course not. Just…just curious."

"Yeah, well, it's hardly a 'woman,' at least not the kind of 'woman' people are gossiping about. It's Effie; she's staying with me for a while."

Peeta almost cringes at the thought of Effie. It's not that he has anything against Effie, it's just that the last time he saw her, she had been naked and bleeding from a torture session that he'd been forced to watch. He looks around, frightened that she might be hanging around, lurking behind a door or in a hallway. The last thing he wants is to see her, because then he'll either have to talk about what happened in the Capitol, or pretend that nothing did, and either way, he's just not up to it.

"Why…why is she here?" he asks. Haymitch looks at him questioningly, and Peeta pulls himself together to add, "Honestly, I never thought I'd see her again. Figured she'd stay safely in the Capitol and never come back here now that she has no reason to."

"Yeah, well, she needed to get away from the Capitol for a little while, so I invited her to stay here." Haymitch's face is suddenly serious, "Truthfully, she's having some—" As if on cue, a shrill scream echoes through the house, causing Peeta to jump and drop his coffee cup on the floor, where it shatters. Haymitch looks at the mess, then narrows his eyes in annoyance and looks up at the ceiling.

"Oh, joy," he says, "Now Effie's up."

Peeta is now trembling visibly.

"Umm…I have to go now. I…I usually visit Katniss around this time; don't want to keep her waiting. See you later, Haymitch."

"What the hell is wrong with him?" Haymitch asks himself after Peeta bolts from the house. He takes another glance at the broken cup and shakes his head. _Later_, he thinks. Now he should probably go and make sure Effie is all right.

He doesn't see her anywhere when he enters her room. When he calls her name, the only reply is a high-pitched sob from the general direction of the closet. Briefly, Haymitch thinks of Katniss, and how in District 13 he had constantly had to locate her and pull her out from behind shelves and pipes. _Please don't start that stupid little game, Princess_, he thinks. In his house, there are infinitely fewer places that Effie could crawl into, but still, he just doesn't think he's up for a never-ending game of hide and seek.

Haymitch strides over to the closet and opens the door, revealing Effie, balled up in one of the tight corners, crying into the hem of one of her dresses.

"Come on out, Princess; you don't want to cry all over your pretty clothes. Didn't you tell me one time that all your outfits are dry clean only?"

"Go away," Effie says, burying her face deeper in the fabric.

"No," Haymitch says, "I'm not leaving you alone. Come on now." He reaches inside and gets a gentle hold on one of her arms. When he tries to carefully pull her out of the closet, she screams.

"Don't touch me!" she sobs, "Just leave me alone."

Haymitch instantly withdraws his hand. "Sorry," he says. He moves away and sits on the floor just outside of the closet, listening to her cry for a few minutes.

"Did you have another nightmare?" he asks when he can't bear her sobs any longer. She doesn't answer him. "Oh, come on, sweetheart; nobody knows more about bad dreams than I do. Talk to me."

"Why did you leave me?" Effie asks, her voice small and weak.

"What?" he asks.

"In the Capitol. Why did you go to Thirteen and leave me in the Capitol? Why didn't you try to save me?"

Haymitch takes a deep breath. "I…I thought you'd be safe."

"You should have known I wouldn't," she says angrily, "Did you think at all? You should have known they would take me…you…you should've…"

"Yeah, sweetheart, I should have done a lot of things," he says.

"I wasn't important enough to you. Not enough for you to save me," Effie says, her chest shaking with sobs.

"Damn it, Effie, no. Don't think like that. I…I was confused. I had all these feelings for you, and I didn't—I didn't know how to handle them. I didn't want to get in too deep with you because I knew I couldn't stay. I figured it would be less painful for both of us if I kept my distance. I didn't tell you about any of my plans because I didn't want you to know anything that would put you in danger, and I thought, 'There's no way they'll think Effie's a rebel.' I wanted you safe, and I didn't think you would be safe with me. No one has ever been safe with me."

"I would have been. Safer than I was on my own, anyway."

After a profound silence, Effie finally crawls out of the closet. She looks like hell with her hair wild around her face and her eyes red and puffy.

"What did you think you were going to do after the rebellion?" Effie asks, "Did you think you were just going to come back for me and all would be forgiven, or did you plan on coming here, to Twelve, and never seeing me again?"

"I didn't expect to live through the rebellion. I wish I hadn't."

Unexpectedly, she goes to him, crawling across the short stretch of carpet between them and putting her arms around his shoulders.

"Where would I be if you hadn't?" she asks, laughing bitterly, "That's the most pathetic thing about all of this. I have to forgive you because you're all I have left."

Haymitch is startled, but then he thinks of all of the people they used to know, and how almost all of them are dead, and he knows she's telling the truth. He buries his face in her soft, fragrant hair. He feels wetness against his shirt where her face is pressed into the fabric and chokes back tears of his own.

"Well, sweetheart, you've been the only thing I've had left for the last seven years; I was just too stupid to figure that out." He cups her face in his hands, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "And just for the record, you don't have to forgive me. I still haven't forgiven myself."


	5. Crossfire of Heaven and Hell

_Watching you dress as you turn down the light_

_I forget all about the storm outside._

_Dark clouds roll their way over town._

_Heartache and pain came pouring down like_

_Chaos in the rain, yeah_

_They're handing it out._

_And we're caught up in the crossfire_

_Of Heaven and Hell._

_And we're searching for shelter._

"_Crossfire" – Brandon Flowers_

The first time Effie feels secure enough to venture outside of Victor's Village, Haymitch takes her to the market. District 12 is still struggling to get on its feet and so they're not sure what they'll find there, but Effie feels bad about bothering Katniss and Greasy Sae every night for dinner when she could easily cook something at the house. Haymitch is surprised when she offers to cook.

"I wasn't under the impression that you knew how," he says.

She crosses her arms over her chest and purses her lips. "Of course I know how; I've lived by myself since I was 22 years old. Even people in the Capitol have some measure of self-sufficiency."

Haymitch thinks of making a biting remark but keeps his mouth shut. If Effie wants to cook, why should he complain about it? Even the vilest thing she could whip up would be better than eating Greasy Sae's soup night after night. Besides, he's almost out of liquor and they can visit the Hob while they're out.

Before going out, Effie puts on the plainest dress she can find in all the clothes she brought with her. She slips into her white flats and gathers her hair up in a messy bun. She looks at herself in the mirror and frowns. She still looks unmistakably Capitol—not at all like she belongs in District 12.

Haymitch can't suppress his smile when he sees her in her simple, unadorned, knee-length white dress. He remembers another ensemble, a loud magenta suit complete with pink wig and towering heels that it was a miracle she could even walk in. He can't help but think how different she looks now, how infinitely more pretty in basic clothes without cosmetics caked all over her face.

_I prefer this Effie Trinket_, he thinks as they walk together through the market, looking over things and talking. An hour later, despite the slim pickings, they've managed to scrounge out the ingredients for a stew and, of course, two bottles of white liquor for Haymitch. They're hurrying home because the sky has gone overcast and there's thunder booming in the distance. They've just made it to Haymitch's yard when the first drops start to fall. Haymitch, carrying the groceries and his liquor, runs into the house, surprised when Effie doesn't follow him.

Instead, she stands perfectly still in the middle of his yard. It's pouring now and when Haymitch comes back out to check on her he sees that her clothes are wet and her hair has come out of its bun and is plastered to her face. She's soaked to the bone but instead of panicking, she's laughing hysterically.

"Come inside, Princess," he calls to her.

"No!" she replies, "You come out here."

He shakes his head, but walks to meet her in the middle of the yard anyway. "Have you completely lost your mind?" he asks.

"I've never gotten caught in the rain before," she says, holding out her hand and watching the droplets as they splash in her palm.

"It doesn't rain in the Capitol?" Haymitch asks sarcastically.

"Of course it does, but I never let myself get caught up in it. I was always too worried about my clothes getting ruined or my makeup running." Effie giggles and twirls around. As she does, the hem of her dress rises to reveal her creamy thighs, and Haymitch realizes that her wet white dress is now completely see-through. He grabs her arm gently as she comes to a rest, dizzy from spinning.

"Let's go inside, Effie. We're both soaked; we'll get sick if we stay out here."

She doesn't reply. She simply stares at his fingers curled lightly around her wrist. Her deep blue eyes meet his Seam gray ones and, before either of them even realizes what's happening, their lips are meeting and Effie's arms are winding around Haymitch's neck. They've kissed before, but it was so long ago and under such strained circumstances that this kiss, for Haymitch, feels like the first. Effie moans as his tongue meets hers and his fingers curl in her hair, bringing her closer to him.

Vaguely, she's aware of him disengaging them, taking her hand and leading her into the house. They reach the front door, and Haymitch slams it and pushes her back against the wood, pinning her with his body while his lips roam over her face and neck and finally back to her mouth. The spell that his kisses and caresses have cast upon her is broken when she realizes that she is covered by his body, barely able to move, and that his hand is slowly, gently creeping up her thigh and beneath her skirt. All at once, she's no longer in District 12 but back in her jail cell in the Capitol, and it's not Haymitch touching her but one of the Peacekeepers.

"No!" she cries, pushing against his chest, "Stop! No!"

Haymitch pulls away, the expression on his face a mixture of confusion and pain.

"Effie, what…?" he asks. Tears are spilling down her face and he wants to reach out to her but is afraid that even a single touch will undo her.

"I…" Effie stammers as she comes back to reality, "Oh, Haymitch…I'm so sorry. I…" Her voice breaks and she shakes her head, running away from him, up the stairs to her room. Haymitch hears the slamming of her door and then a high-pitched wail from the upper level. He grabs one of his liquor bottles and takes a sip, thinks that maybe he should go to her, but wonders if that might do more harm than good. He drinks for a solid hour, until the alcohol gives him the courage to climb the stairs and knock on her door.

"Come in," she says. Effie is curled up in her bed, trembling and sobbing beneath the sheets.

"Are you all right, sweetheart?" Haymitch asks, sitting on the bed and looking at her. Effie shakes her head.

"I'm so sorry, Haymitch," she whispers, reaching out her hand to him. He takes it, brushing his thumb lightly over her knuckles.

"Don't apologize," he says, "It's not your fault."

"I just…I couldn't help it…"

"I know." He climbs into the bed next to her, propping himself up against the pillows. She closes the gap between them, snuggling into his side, her tears staining his shirt, and he holds her until she's stopped crying and her breaths are soft and shallow. He moves down in the bed gently, trying his best not to disturb her. He looks out of the window to see that the sun has just barely gone down and realizes that they're both still wearing the wet clothes that they went out in, but Effie is soft and comfortable at his side and he can't bring himself to wake her, so instead he wraps his arms around her waist, buries his face in her damp hair, and allows sleep to take him over.

It is the first night since being liberated from prison that Effie does not see horrors in her dream, and the first time in twenty-six years that Haymitch doesn't sleep with a knife.


	6. The Capitol

Effie watches as Haymitch storms through the door in a rage, making an obscene gesture at his back, a gesture which, ironically enough, she never even would have learned had she not seen him point it in Seneca Crane's general direction during the 73rd Hunger Games. She sits down on her plush, aqua-upholstered sofa and fights the tears that prick the corners of her eyes.

She doesn't understand why Haymitch is behaving the way he has been ever since the hovercraft landed them in the Capitol. After all, it was his idea that she should come with him. When he had been summoned by President Paylor to come to the Capitol on "official government business," he had practically begged her not to make him go alone.

"You won't be alone," she had pointed out, "You'll have Katniss and Peeta."

"Which is the same as being alone," he replied, and Effie knew he was right. The "star-crossed lovers" of District 12 were still trying to rebuild their relationship, and so spending time with Haymitch wasn't exactly number one on their list of priorities. Effie knew that Haymitch would have a hard time being in the city with no one to talk to or to look after him and, besides, she didn't exactly relish the thought of being by herself in Twelve, either. So she had come, against her better judgment, and now she saw that staying behind would definitely have been the better choice.

Haymitch had been surly and even more drunk than usual from the moment they had touched down in the Capitol. His drinking had actually been under control over the last few months—it seemed that with Effie around, he had been making an effort to cut back. But now his flask was practically glued to his lips, and Effie remembered why he used to disgust her so much when they had worked together.

The first day, Effie had decided that, while she was in the Capitol, she should go and visit her great-aunt, her grandfather's sister and the only family she had left who would still talk to her. She decided that the elderly aunt wasn't likely to recognize her if she didn't look at least somewhat like her old self. So she had dressed up in one of her old suits and applied her makeup, not nearly as much of it as she used to wear, but significantly more than she had worn in the months spent in Twelve, where no one wore makeup and it made her look out of place. She considered a wig, but decided against it because her hair had grown so much since the last time she wore one. She decided to put it up in an elegant bun. Haymitch had come into her bedroom just as she was putting in her last hair pin.

"Well, well, well," he said, taking a swig from the bottle of whiskey in his hand, "You can take the girl out of the Capitol, but you can't take the Capitol out of the girl. Really, Eff, I thought you had put all that stupid bullshit behind you."

They had been staying at her Capitol apartment for three days, and the whole time he had been spewing hateful remarks at her. Whenever he did it, he would study her, as if trying to gage her reaction, determine how much of his crassness she could take. Since she knew that he was trying to bait her, she refused to respond, refused to allow him to see how much his taunting hurt.

The dam had finally broken for both of them that night, when at dinner she had looked out of the window at the cityscape, let out a wistful sigh and made a casual comment about how, sometimes; she wished she could just go back in time, back to her old life.

"Oh, I bet you do," Haymitch said, "It would be so much better for you, wouldn't it, if you could just go back to being the spoiled, privileged Capitol bitch you always were?"

She had let her anger fly then, and she and Haymitch had a proper screaming match like they used to have in their first few years of working together, before he had begun to trust her and she had learned to take his surliness in stride. It had ended with her tossing a salad bowl at his head and him calling her a stupid Capitol cunt.

"That's it, Haymitch," she had screamed as he put on his coat and strode towards the door, "When you go back to Twelve, you're going alone."

"Fine by me, sweetheart," he had said, ducking as her wineglass soared over his head and shattered against the wall behind him.

Four hours later…

_Damn, I hate the Capitol_, Haymitch thinks as he walks through the street, staring at all the lavishly-dressed people as they sashay by in their ridiculous costumes, looking at his plain clothes, the bottle in his hand and the stubble on his cheeks with disdain, _Nothing ever changes here. We went through a whole damn revolution and people are still as stupid as they ever were, including fucking Effie_.

He knows that this judgment of Effie is unfair, and that she's only put her Capitol disguise back on so that she can blend in as much as possible. "People recognized me whether I wore the clothes and the makeup or not," he remembers her saying once, during a night in Twelve when they had stayed up passing a bottle of white liquor back and forth, "So I just kept putting on the wigs and the high heels because at least then, I could show them I hadn't been beaten."

Haymitch knows that she's just as uncomfortable here as he is, and that this place ceased to be her home after the 75th Games had ended and the Peacekeepers had come and slapped handcuffs on her. Still, being here makes him feel the old hatred, the old bitterness. He still feels it in Twelve, but it's so much stronger here.

This is the place that he was taken when he was sixteen and polished up just so that he could be thrown into an arena to kill or be killed. This is the place where he watched the same thing happen to a string of other kids that he couldn't save, and where he was forced to watch from the comfort of the plush penthouse sofa while his tributes had their throats slashed and their heads bashed in. He cannot stem the desire to drink, to forget, any more than he can stop the hatred from spewing out of his mouth.

And she, as always, is caught in the crossfire. _Fucking Effie_, he thinks, trying to hate her and knowing that he can't. He had hated her, once, when they had begun working together, had hated her because she _was_ the Capitol with her stupid voice and her taste for decadence. And then he had seen the worry in her eyes after they had sent their tributes off, had heard her crying in her room at night whenever one of the tributes died. He had gotten to know her, had realized that she wasn't the Capitol because she had empathy and knew right from wrong, and he had known he could never hate her again.

His hands fumble with his key as he approaches the door to her apartment. After wrestling with the lock, he stumbles inside, expecting to be greeted by another round of angry harassment from her. After all, he has been treating her like shit for days and he isn't entirely sure he's even welcome at her apartment anymore.

All the lights are off and he hears the drone of the television from the living room. He walks into the room, expecting to find Effie curled up on the sofa asleep, but instead he sees that she is intent on the television screen. He pauses in the doorway. On the screen, a group of people are singing "Happy birthday, dear Effie," and a little girl in a frilly pink dress, perched on the lap of a blond man in a suit of Capitol design, is blowing out candles. In the next shot, that same blond girl is running around a spacious yard, chasing a boy with dark hair who's got a doll under his arm. "Seneca!" little Effie yells, "Seneca, give it back!"

Haymitch sees adult Effie wipe away tears as she watches her old home movies, and he can't help but think, _No wonder she wishes she could have her old life back_. In her old life, she had had birthday cake and pink dresses and Seneca Crane. Now all she has is an angry, middle-aged alcoholic and a life that's been torn into a thousand pieces. He comes to sit beside her on the sofa, and she turns to him with tears still shining in her blue eyes. Without a word, he reaches out to her, and she takes shelter in his arms.

"I don't want to stay here, Haymitch," she says sadly, "There's nothing here anymore; everything is dead. When you go back to Twelve, I want to go back with you."

"Well, good, because there was no way I was going to leave you here." She smiles, and then leans into him and kisses his cheek.

"Effie, look," he begins, "I just want to say that I'm s—" She cuts his words off with a kiss.

"No," she says when she pulls away, "I know you are." She moves into his lap so that she's straddling his body, and her lips and tongue are assaulting his mouth as his hands tangle in her hair. When she moves off of his lap and stands up, she grabs his hand, leading him to her bedroom.

"Are you sure, Effie?" he asks as they lie down on her bed.

"Yes," she whispers, reaching for the buttons of his shirt, deftly removing the garment and then letting her hands explore his torso, lightly fingering the twenty-six-year-old scar on his stomach.

He does the same when he undresses her, kissing and caressing the scars and burn marks that crisscross her arms and her breasts, reassuring her that she's beautiful though he knows she thinks her marks have ruined her body. Neither Haymitch nor Effie is completely inexperienced, but when they finally come together, she's so nervous and it's been so long since he's been close to anyone that they are like innocents exploring one another in the dark.


	7. Greasy Sae's Revelation

The heat of the day makes Effie's stomach turn as she walks through Victor's Village. Her hair, now grown long and lush in the span of time she's spent in District 12, is heavy and hot on her neck, and so she reaches behind her to hold it up, sighing and wishing for a hair pin. _Say what you will about the clothes I used to wear in the Capitol_, she thinks, _but at least my old suits had pockets where I could keep useful little things_. Not that she minds the simple red dress that she wears now. As far as comfort goes, these District people have had it right all along—her plain clothes allow for much more freedom of movement and don't have to be worn over a corset in order to fit properly.

Her musings on clothes end at Katniss Everdeen's front door. It's best to think of almost anything else during her weekly visits to the girl who had, once upon a time, been her charge. After all, Katniss cares so little about clothes that she could easily be dressed in a burlap sack and not be fazed by it. Effie lifts her hand and knocks on the door, and Peeta Mellark's voice invites her in.

"Peeta," she says upon entering the house and seeing the boy in his flour-stained clothing, "I didn't realize you were here."

"Oh, umm…hi there, Effie. I…I could go, if you're here to see Katniss…"

"No! No, Peeta, please don't go. You're obviously in the middle of baking and, anyway, I…" Effie looks down at her shoes and then back up at Peeta, "I think it's time for us to stop being awkward with one another. I'm going to be here indefinitely, after all, and I think it would be a shame to let bad memories from the Capitol keep us from being friends."

Peeta nods in agreement and even manages a smile, but after Katniss comes downstairs from her bedroom and Greasy Sae arrives to start cooking dinner, he confines himself to the kitchen until he's finished his baking and can leave.

Effie and Katniss sit down on the sofa together, and Effie takes out her sewing and begins to talk while Katniss sits and stares at the floor. Effie is one of the few people with whom Katniss will actually converse. She has no idea why the girl loves her so much or why she looks forward to her visits, but Greasy Sae has reassured Effie that her coming to see Katniss at least once a week is doing the former Mockingjay a world of good. So, once a week, Effie comes with her sewing or some other busy work and sits with Katniss, carrying on mostly one-sided conversations. Today, the topic of discussion is how under the weather Effie has been feeling.

"…and I'm just tired all the time. This morning I barely managed to drag myself out of bed; I only got up because Haymitch accused me of being lazy, and when Haymitch of all people thinks you've slept too late, you know it's time to get moving."

Greasy Sae, who is dropping onions into a pot to make soup, rolls her eyes at Effie's chatter. She decidedly did not like the pampered princess when Haymitch had first brought her over for dinner, and Greasy Sae had predicted that Effie would be running screaming back to the Capitol before you could say "dog meat soup." However, the fact that Effie stayed this long impressed her, and Greasy Sae had to admit that Effie wasn't so bad once you got to know her. A little bit of an airhead sometimes, and her accent, of course, just grated on Greasy Sae's nerves, but otherwise she thought Effie was basically a sweet girl.

Suddenly, the small talk from the living room ceases and Greasy Sae hears Katniss ask, "Hey, are you all right?" before Effie comes running into the kitchen, her hand over her mouth. She barely reaches the sink before she's spilling the contents of her stomach. When she's finished, Effie sinks to her knees on the kitchen floor, trying to catch her breath. She looks up and she sees that both Greasy Sae and Katniss, who's joined them in the kitchen, are staring at her.

"Oh," she says, her face flushing in embarrassment, "I'm so sorry, Greasy Sae. I just…I've been feeling so sick lately. I don't know what's wrong with me."

Greasy Sae purses her lips. "How long you been throwing up, child?" she asks. Effie shrugs.

"I don't know, about a week or two. I thought I might have gotten some kind of stomach virus, but I haven't really had any other symptoms, and I haven't seemed to get any better. I just hope I haven't managed to get you or Katniss sick."

"I don't think anybody can catch what you've got. You been feeling really tired lately, or getting emotional for no reason?"

"Yes, both," Effie replies, "Why; what do you think is the matter?"

Greasy Sae chuckles. "Let me guess, you haven't bled this month like you supposed to, either?"

Effie's cheeks turn bright red and she resents the personal nature of the question, but instead of getting angry, she finds herself shaking her head.

"Well, congratulations, child; it sounds to me like you're pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Effie asks in disbelief.

"Yes, pregnant," Greasy Sae says, observing the confusion written all over Effie's face, "What, do women not have babies in the Capitol? Are you all hatched out of golden eggs?"

Even Katniss smiles at that.

"No," Effie says, unconsciously pressing a hand to her abdomen, "No, of course not. I understand. It's just…I never thought…"

"Well, you should probably start thinking," Greasy Sae replies.

"Yes, I suppose I should. I…I should probably go now and find Haymitch so we can have a little talk," Effie says. She bids goodbye to Greasy Sae and kisses Katniss on the cheek before collecting her things from the living room.

As Effie walks out of the door, Greasy Sae shakes her head and turns to Katniss.

"I don't know what I'm looking forward to more," she says, "Watching her try to change a diaper or seeing Haymitch pushing a stroller."


	8. A Wedding in District 12

Effie squints at her reflection in the mirror, hardly recognizing herself underneath the soft, subtle makeup and elegantly-styled hairdo. She doesn't think she's ever looked more beautiful in her life. The past year in District 12, she has hardly worn makeup at all, since putting it on is an unnecessary waste of time. Of course, before she had come to live with Haymitch, her face had always been buried beneath layers clown makeup that aged her by ten years. But now she looks young and vibrant—happy, for once in her life. She supposes the pregnancy glow contributes a little to that.

At first Effie had been leery about holding her wedding while pregnant. In the Capitol, things like that were highly frowned upon. For such a dissolute town, Capitol City had stringent and prudish moral standards when it came to sex, or at least they pretended to. Even though everybody knew that absolutely no one waited until marriage for sex, everyone was expected to, and those who didn't weren't supposed to acknowledge it. Getting married while "expecting" was seen as a mark of shame and, because there were so many different ways to prevent pregnancy to begin with, it was a rare occurrence.

Greasy Sae had laughed out loud when Effie expressed her concerns. She had assured Effie that in District 12, it wasn't at all uncommon for women to walk down the aisle pregnant. "I was at two months myself whenever I got married," Greasy Sae said. She had cautioned Effie to do it as quickly as possible so that she wouldn't be waddling down the aisle or having her water break in the middle of the ceremony. "That happened to a friend of mine, you know," said Greasy Sae, "The woman is almost seventy now and she still blushes about it."

Effie had also been concerned that Haymitch had only suggested they get married because she was pregnant. When she told him, he had been silent for several minutes, and then he had told her he thought it was wonderful before kissing her and leaving the house. He had come home several hours later so drunk he could hardly walk and Effie had cried while putting him to bed.

She later found out that he had wandered over to Greasy Sae's little cabin where the two had shared a bottle of white liquor. He rambled about what a horrible father he was going to make until the old woman managed to talk some sense into him. The next day, after his hangover passed, Haymitch had taken Effie's hand and said, "I love you. I think we should get married." It was the first time he had ever said those three words to her, and she had been so overwhelmed with emotion that she didn't even think before saying yes.

"But what if he's only marrying me because of the baby?" Effie had later asked Greasy Sae. The old woman balked.

"Child, Haymitch is a grumpy old drunk, but he doesn't take these things lightly. If he said he loves you, then he's marrying you because he loves you."

Effie can't help but frown a bit as she slides into her simple but beautiful wedding dress. She's only just begun to show, but she's afraid it will be painfully obvious to everyone that her stomach is no longer flat. For once since she moved away from the Capitol, she misses being constantly surrounded by stylists. Cinna would have been able to perform some last-minute draping miracle on her dress that would hide her little bump.

After the dress is on, Effie sits down in front of the mirror to put the finishing touches on her makeup. As she swipes a sheer lipstick over her mouth, she reflects on how differently her life would have gone if everything had remained the same, if the rebellion had never happened and Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark had died in the 74th Games.

She had been meant to marry Seneca Crane. She had known that since she was old enough to understand such things. She and Seneca had been brought up together, and an eventual match between them had been their parents' object in raising them side-by-side. The plan had backfired catastrophically. There had never been anything romantic between Effie and Seneca. They had both, at various points in their lives, tried to feel something for each other, but she had always loved Seneca only as a brother and best friend.

Still, Effie supposed that, if Seneca had never been killed, she would have given in as she got older and men became less interested. She would have married him out of desperation, and it would have been what old Capitolists dubbed "a good match" between two old and prominent families. Perhaps President Snow himself would have given her away, in the absence of her own father. Married to the Head Gamemaker, she would have been perfectly at liberty to quit her job as escort. She would have been a fixture of the Games either way, either shepherding the tributes from a "good" district like Two or sitting in the Gamemaker's box with her husband. The function of the Head Gamemaker's wife in the Games had been merely decorative, but her hair and clothes had always set the trend for the Capitol's fall fashion season.

With Seneca she would have been comfortable and content…but she never would have known real love, and she would never really have been happy. This, she knew, was why marrying Haymitch was what her life had always been leading up to. She and Haymitch weren't perfect together and never would be. She knew that they would always be fighting more often than not and that he would always be an alcoholic and she would never fully shed her Capitol veneer no matter how much she chipped away at it. She also knew that life with Haymitch would be interesting, and that whether she loved him passionately or hated him with every fiber of her being, their relationship would never be lukewarm.

There's a knock at her door, and Katniss's voice from the other side.

"Hey, Effie," the girl says, "It's about to start; they sent me up to see if you're ready."

"Yes," Effie says, smiling at her reflection in the mirror, "Yes, I'm ready."


	9. Renewal

"Diana, you do not pick up your pork chop with your hands!" Haymitch heard Effie's voice from the dining room, where she had just served their daughter lunch.

"But Mama…" five-year-old Diana Abernathy's childish voice pleads.

"Do not 'but Mama' me. You must learn manners! No child of mine is going to eat like a little heathen."

Haymitch enters the dining room, where he sees Diana staring angrily at her plate while his wife is at the other end of the table, meticulously shaping her fingernails with a file. Effie and Diana both look up as he enters. The little blonde girl smiles at her father, but Effie's expression is sour.

"Oh, Haymitch; I see you're back from Katniss and Peeta's. I was just trying to instill some manners in your daughter, but of course she's resisting me at every turn."

"My daughter?" Haymitch says, going into the kitchen to make a plate for himself. "Yesterday morning when she went to school without fussing and crying she was your daughter. Why does she belong only to me when she's bad?"

"Because she gets it from you," Effie replies.

"Yes," Haymitch says, picking up a piece of pork chop with his fingers just to annoy her, "Because you are just perfect and always have been."

"I was a very well-behaved child, unlike yourself. You're almost fifty and still just a naughty little kid."

Haymitch glances in his daughter's direction and rolls his eyes in an exaggerated fashion, making the little girl laugh. Effie thinks of taking another jab at his lack of manners, but even she can't help but grin.

When Diana has been sent to her room to play, Haymitch stays behind in the kitchen, helping Effie to wash the dirty dishes.

"I really do wish you wouldn't contradict me in front of Diana," Effie says, handing him a clean plate to dry, "She needs to learn some manners and, above all, she needs to learn to mind me. She won't take me seriously if you're always turning everything into a joke."

"Well, what can I say, Princess?" Haymitch replies, "You know I'm just a naughty little kid."

Effie looks at him questioningly. Even after more than ten years of being around Haymitch, first as his co-worker, then his lover and now his wife, she still can never tell when he's being sincere and when he's joking. There's a smile on his face now, which she returns.

"I'm serious, Haymitch," she says.

"Yeah, that's your problem. You're always serious." He drops the dish rag and suddenly his arms are around her. "You're always too damn serious."

"Haymitch…" Effie begins. Without warning, his hands are creeping up her blouse, fingers lightly skimming her sides, the one place on her body that she is ticklish. She laughs hysterically, trying to push him away from her.

"Stop!" she giggles, "Stop stop stop!" Stop he does, pulling her into him and kissing her mouth lightly. Just as her tongue is parting his lips, they both jump and separate from each other as a high-pitched wailing emanates from upstairs.

"Jesse," Effie sighs.

"Go on and take care of him," replies Haymitch, "I'll finish the dishes."

When all of the dishes are cleaned, dried and put away, Haymitch wanders into the living room to see Effie sitting on the sofa. Her blouse is unbuttoned and her free hand is lightly stroking the soft dark hair of the infant nursing at her breast. Haymitch can't help but feel emotional, just as he does every time he looks at the little boy who already looks so much like him, with olive skin and dark hair contrasting with Seam-gray eyes. His and Effie's miracle child, the child that was, according to the doctor, never supposed to exist.

Effie had had a hard time giving birth to Diana—labor for her had been excruciating; it had lasted almost two days and Effie's agonized screams had echoed throughout Victor's Village. Greasy Sae, when she'd come out of Effie's bedroom just after midnight on the second day, had sadly told Haymitch that it was unlikely that both Effie and the baby would survive. When both mother and child had come through the ordeal alive, the doctor that Effie's great-aunt had sent from the Capitol had said Effie would never have any more children—it would be impossible for her to conceive.

Effie's second pregnancy—after she and Haymitch _and_ the Capitol doctor had gotten over the shock of there even being a pregnancy at all—was fraught with anxiety. Haymitch had laughed out loud when Greasy Sae emerged from Effie's room just four hours after the onset of labor and told him that Effie had delivered a healthy baby boy like it was no great task. "Of course she did," he had said, "She did it to prove that son of a bitch Capitol doctor wrong. She did it to prove that she could."

Effie's life over the last few years had been proving that she could to people who doubted her. Greasy Sae had predicted she wouldn't last a month in District 12, so Effie had stayed for six years. Peeta said that she'd never even learn how to make bread properly, so she had become a good enough baker to give even Peeta a run for his money. When Effie had taken up gardening, Katniss had predicted that all her plants would be dead within a month, but Effie discovered that she, the prissy little Capitol girl who had never even _seen_ an un-potted plant until her first time in Twelve, had the greenest thumb in the entire district.

And, of course, absolutely _everybody_ had said that she'd never make a family man of the surly drunk who slept with a knife and who had, in darker days, embarrassed his entire district by falling off of a stage while pissed. Haymitch himself had played a large role in helping Effie to refute that prediction. He still drank, but after Diana came, he made a sincere effort not to let his drinking interfere with being a father to his children. At present, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd had more than he could handle. He was still surly. Even in his early youth, before the Hunger Games had turned him into a broken alcoholic, it had never been in his nature to be outgoing and extroverted the way that Effie was. Still, everyone in District 12 had noticed how much happier he seemed these days, even if his smiles were rare and reserved solely for Effie and his children.


End file.
